Time required
Approximately 20-25 minutes, depending on group size.
Instructions
This activity can be repeated at the beginning of each week, meeting, project, season, or event to help keep the team aligned and focused on their shared intentions. This is meant to be quick and easy. If you need a more comprehensive approach to developing a shared vision and agreement about how your team will react, see Team agreement process.
By setting intentions together, the team can envision success, plan for challenges, and work together more effectively to achieve their goals.
In advance of the activity, prepare the following to display on a screen or flip chart.
[Include the subject of the intention, whether it be for the week, meeting, project, season or event.]
- What’s our intention?
- What do we hope to accomplish?
- What will be your behaviours when things are going well?
- What will be your behaviours when things are more stressful?
You may facilitate this team activity as suggested below, or you could alter it to fit the needs and preferences of your team. You can adapt the wording below to only create shared or personal intentions as a group.
Suggested wording
Today we're going to set intentions as a team to help us achieve our goals for the upcoming [week, meeting, project, event or season]. By setting intentions, we can create a shared vision and are able to plan for success. After that, we'll each set our own personal positive intentions and discuss how we'll approach things when they're going well or when things are more stressful.
Let's take a few minutes to reflect on what we want to achieve for the upcoming [week, meeting, project, event or season] as a team.
To start, I’d like you to reflect on a few questions.
- What’s our intention for this [week, meeting, project, season or event]?
- What do we hope to accomplish?
Record your thoughts on a piece of paper or a digital document and we will share in 5 minutes.
[After 5 minutes]
Now let's share our responses with the group. What did you come up with for our intention as a team and what we hope to accomplish?
[Allow each person to provide their answer if they choose.]
Great, we have a lot of great ideas here! How can we synthesize these ideas into a shared set of intentions that we can all agree on?
[Allow time for some discussion. When there seems to be agreement, write out the team intention on a flipchart, whiteboard or on the screen.]
Based on our discussion, the shared intention for the team is [read the shared intention.] We can use this intention to help guide our actions and behaviours throughout.
Let's hold ourselves and each other accountable for living up to these intentions.
Optional
[If you have the time, you can go further to facilitate each team member to come up with their own personal intention.]
Now that we've established our shared intentions, let's take a few minutes to think about our own personal positive intentions. What are some positive intentions we can set for ourselves to help us contribute to our shared intentions and accomplish our goals?
- What is your personal intention for this [week, meeting, project, season or event]?
- What do you hope to accomplish?
- What will be your behaviours when things are going well?
- What will be your behaviours when things are more stressful?
Take a moment to record your personal intentions and what your behaviours will be when things are going well or are more stressful during this [week, meeting, project, season or event] on a separate piece of paper or a digital document. You have 3 minutes.
[After 3 minutes.]
Would anyone like to share what they came up with?
[Allow volunteers to answer.]
Thank you all for sharing. Next, let’s consider how we can support each other in achieving our personal intentions and contributing to our shared intentions as a team. Does anyone have some ideas?
[Allow volunteers to answer.]
That was great.
Finally, let's all commit to upholding both our shared intentions and our personal intentions throughout the period.
Find more activities like this at Team building activities.